Bonnaroo 2011: From a Rigger’s Diary

It took nearly 24 hours of unbroken sleep to recover from my Bonnaroocleosis. Like other workers, performers, and festicle-goers in attendance, I’ve been hacking up silty brown lung-dumplings and blowing whole coal fields of black boogers into rolls of tissue.

The annual Bonnaroo dust storm could be a preview of the world after a nuclear cataclysm, where those so privileged will wring their desperate satisfaction from tingling chemicals, sun-seared flesh on display, and the pulsating rhythm of pleasure machines, leaving pathetic Plebeians to pick through the scraps.

I’m late as usual to pick up Glen the Red, a fellow rigger who packed his camping gear and work tools hours ago. We hurtle down the highway to pick up our credentials at Manchester’s high school.

I ask the hipster behind the counter about the RFID tags that are now implanted in festicle-goers’ wristbands. He tells me the electronic chips are to weed out ticket fraud, but also to assist in the identification and removal of evil-doers.

I ask him if the information will be used for marketing demographics. With RFID readers carefully placed around the site, promoters should be able to see who goes to what shows, and for how long. This would render the profit pyramid with unprecedented accuracy. (How fitting that RFID technology got its start in cow-herding, warehouse management, and Apocalyptic propaganda.)

Clerky McClipboard tells me that demographic studies are under development, and that hopefully people will be able to purchase overpriced consumer goods via microchip next year. This is vaguely depressing—in an End Times kind of way—but not as depressing as the crummy Staff Pass he hands me. What happened to the premium passes?

On site, Gator is waiting to welcome us into The Grove, where we pitch our tents beneath gently swaying oaks surrounded by barbed wire. This is sacred space backstage, set apart from the turmoil and communicable diseases of the circus tent ghettos which house most festicle workers—the riggers, steel dogs, stagehands, security guards, and volunteer trash-scrappers. If you happen by The Grove, just assume that you are not invited.

Tuesday, June 7What’s the difference between a rigger and God?
God doesn’t think he’s a rigger!

I love climbing the massive main stage in the morning. Seventy feet from the peak to the deck—a jungle gym for grown-ups. The steel truss sizzles your palms under the proscenium, the air is suffocating, the smell somewhere between a dusty old book and a bloody nose.

The up-rigger gig is the best job I’ve ever had. It has taken years—and plenty of patient teachers—to hone my craft. I’ve been dragged through the muck as a stagehand and I’ve lapped up the luxuries as a touring tech—nothing beats climbing the steel with the boys. We race to the top of the wire-rope ladder to drop in our ropes. We pull up the motor chains hand-over-hand, sweat pouring, muscles taut, until every motor that hoists the lights, sound, and video is ready to fly.

This art is pure. Bullshit has no place here.

The camaraderie is akin to that among pilots or soldiers, only scuzzier. Riggers literally depend on each other for survival every day. Success means you climb down, smoke a cigarette, and count up your cash. Failure means you fall to your death, or worse, you drop something and kill somebody below. I’ve heard people say they want to learn to rig for the money or glory, but that is absurd. There is only one reason to become a high-steel rigger—because you love it.

Dinner: Spaghetti with red meat paste

Wednesday, June 8The Overzealous Douchebag Brigade

Most promoters appreciate riggers for their craft, but to Bonnaroo Rex we’re just another number—usually just a measly fraction. You have to take your liberties here, because nobody’s gonna just give them to you.

After the second day of work, I am told to drive out to some Lower Pleb Parking Lot a mile off site where my car is to be trapped for the duration of the festicle, vulnerable to thieves and vandals. We come to a checkpoint halfway, and drivers are getting shaken down by purple-shirt security.

Three fat bitches—two female, one male—tell me that it doesn’t matter if I am a worker or not, they have the right to rifle through my belongings any time they choose, which means they get to keep whatever they consider contraband—as in “I do what I wawnt, sucka!” It happens to everybody around here.

While many security workers comport themselves with decency and respect—and for you guys, the respect is mutual—there are plenty more who use Bonnaroo’s hypocritical anti-drug policies as an excuse to rampantly steal customers’ and workers’ drugs and alcohol, which they always pocket for themselves. That must be one hell of a party!

After being hassled by police all of their lives, these swarms of belligerent blubber-bellies are happy to take their turn behind the truncheon. Heavy-handed Nazi and Maoist officers probably had the same chips on their shoulders. Soon they’ll have chips in their brains, too.

My response to their dirty demands is simple. Hell no. I just turn around and sneak back into the Parking Lot of Higher Plebeians. Fortunately, these goobers are as unobservant as they are hostile.

Dinner: Sloppy Joes with red meat paste

Thursday, June 9Howdy Doody, Crackerjack

The front gates open wide. Hordes of white kids pour into Centeroo like chariot-riding Aryans descending the Himalayas. Restless seas of unpigmented faces turning pink, the melanin-deficient massive, the Collective Caucasian Unconscious with one bleary third eye peering over the barricades. With few exceptions, the only people of color at Bonnaroo are either onstage or working backstage. Out in the crowd, the scene is whiter than Idaho. Diversity is a matter of bandanas and sandal brands.

People still refer to Bonnaroo as a hippie-fest, but that’s not true at all. The early years hosted the life-long nomads who followed the Dead or Spread, with a sprinkling of Rainbow Family heads, but those cats are long gone. Today the ‘Roo is a wash of generic, middle-class, post-hipster college kids.

Trucker hats and bikini tops. Gauged earrings and 80s shades. Chicks with fresh tattoos that probably cost more than your car, and enough drugs to fry a suburban bodhisattva for life. As unique as snowflakes that all look the same. Unformed and eager for an identity. Just like the online brochure said it would be.

Wait, what do you mean, me and mybland, black attire? I’m a rigger—Fuck you!

Thursday’s performance highlight takes place at the Eminem rehearsals on What Stage. Eminem is pallid and spastic, as usual, spitting irresponsible murderous rants (yawn) and slinging choreographed hand gestures that remind me of a frustrated tour guide trying to explain local history to mentally retarded vacationers. Lucky for us, the thudding bass beats shake the roadcases hard enough to have a water bottle race, like the old vibrating football board game.

When night falls, I watch the fireflies try to seduce the long fingers of light beaming off the Bonnaroo arch at the main entrance. It doesn’t take much to get a simple organism turned on.

Friday, June 10These monkeys be trippin’

There are confirmed reports of a stagehand getting football-tackled by security for voicing his opinion that they are overbearing assholes. Injuries were sustained. Talk about proving a point.

Later in the evening, I see Arcade Fire perform on What Stage. Their lyrics have conscience, which is more than you can say for most pop musicians these days. Just before the show starts, sky-divers are deployed and drop sweeping trails of blinking blue LED lights which spin down on little Whirlybird wings by the tens of thousands. The entire sky sparkles above us. Guess who cleans that up.

Dinner: Red meat paste, now with pasta penne

Speaking of conscience, there are two peculiar sculptures in the VIP areas. One is an intricate life-sized wood-carving behind Which Stage. It depicts two monkeys buzzing down the highway in a VW bus. The driver monkey is smoking a bowl with both hands off the wheel while the passenger sits on top, shielding his eyes with his paw as he stares off at something in the distance. The license plate reads INDIVIDUALS. How cynical. So what is the rider monkey staring at?

In another VIP tent across the venue, there is a wood-carving of a ship sinking into the soil with various treasures floating to the top. The ape-like masses watch with glee as civilization as we know it is sucked under the surface. Global warming, economic collapse, ethnic turmoil, rogue asteroids, nanobot plagues, nuclear annihilation, the wrathful hand of God. So many End Times to choose from. If you’re lucky, you might get your grubby paws on one of those treasure chests as it floats by.

Saturday, June 11Sleep-deprived seekers of the Truth

Still awake after overnight load in. Muscles tired. Brain sizzling. Glen the Red, the Ocelot, and I have been awake for so long. We drink beer in The Grove. We schmoke well. Must take the edge off. I lay back for just a moment as the cruel Eye of Ra creeps up from the horizon.

On my back, they stand over me. The oak trees have never looked so green.

“Stop being a pussy, JoeBot,” they demand. “It’s time to walk.”

We wander to the far reaches of the ‘Roo. Out on the perimeter, past the pre-packaged VIP RV park, beyond the custy campgrounds and corn dog stands, we come across a Hare Krishna stall next to a glass pipe merchant. Wearing our best cop sunglasses, we grill these guru-lovers for the meaning of life.

It all boils down to devotion to God, to unbroken contemplation of Krishna, eating karma-free vegetarian foods, and chanting the names of their sweet Lord: Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna… Hare Rama, Rama Rama… Every act is holy, an offering to God.

“Even taking a shit in these God-forsaken porto-potties?” I ask.

“Yes. To cleanse the body is holy.”

Like most ascetic sects, the Krishnas are pacifists and sexual renunciates. As girls pass by, the incense-burners tell us that the only justified use of sex is to produce a child. All else is unholy.

In Hindu scriptures, Krishna multiplies himself in order to batter the wombs of every lovestruck village girl simultaneously, like that ‘Lil Wayne track where he sings: “I wish I could fuck every girl in the world…”—which includes your girlfriend, your grandmother, and your daughter, just in case you were wondering. But that’s the business of the gods. For Krishna’s followers, it is all about chanting and keeping it in your pants—forever.

“The only thing that matters is Krishna,” the sectoid explains. “All the rest—sex, drugs, the transitory pleasures—are mere illusion.”

I can’t argue with that last part. Still hungry for answers, we wander back toward the ‘Roo. We meet a group of Fundamentalist Christians on the way. One preaches through a bullhorn about the treachery of abortion and Darwinism’s justification of rape while the others hand out cheesy pamphlets. The kids walking by taunt these holy rollers relentlessly.

“Fuck you!” one yells.

“Evolution is proven by chemistry!”

“These guys believe that humans rode dinosaurs!”

One of the preachers approaches us. As it turns out, he’s a reasonable man. He used to work with high-steel riggers when he was in construction, so he knows a bit about our trade. After a long and rational discussion about the great problems of life, the temptations and tragedies of the flesh, the greed and the betrayal, I ask him, What is the highest good?

“To believe in Christ.”

How does that differ from the Krishna-lovers across the way?

Our preacher has no satisfactory answer, so we move on, throwing our senses into the endless barrage of ass and titties. Goddamn, so many blank expressions, fine asses, and jiggling titties. No wonder kids set themselves up to need abortions for the fun of it. My faraway girlfriend is perched on my shoulder, whispering in my ear, making this procession that much more pointless and painful. Love means so much more to me than this.

Mankind knows “there is always one wider than mine, always one tighter than thine.” To reach further than one’s grasp is the root of all suffering, until the apple is eaten to its core.

Back at The Grove, we blabber on. The culties and preachers have a point—transcendence is the only way to peace and freedom—but who would lay down his life for cartoons of Christ or Krishna? Cigarette butts pile high around our ankles.

God is everything and beyond, including our Selves. The true Path must allow one’s Self to thrive without trampling upon the Other. You eat God, you feed God. In the end we are all consumed. The world ends when you die, then Eden is reborn, the Fall is reenacted. Lifetime after lifetime, we grow the Self from the roots of the Whole, continually expanding like the Universe encompassing. Together, with Love.

Another empty beer can falls to the ground. We all look like hell. Another personal Apocalypse has dawned. Will sleep ever find us?

At midnight we see the most compelling performance that Bonnaroo has to offer. From the drowsy hills of Knoxville, Tennessee comes the white man’s answer to Prince, a paragon of headspun sexual indulgence and flamboyant, womanizing faggery. Out of the shadow of rednecks and UT frat boys emerges Fine Peduncle with a drum machine.

The songs are about one thing: fucking. Fine Peduncle loops his beats on the fly, and yet maintains a dominant stage presence, dancing to the rhythm, humping his mixer, stripping down to little red skivvies. The girls in the crowd are creaming, their boyfriends shuffle uncomfortably.

Two stage dancers accompany Fine Peduncle. One is a shambling pile of thrift store clothes with a beaver-tail for a dick, the other is a painted green frog lady with a gaping, ravaged anus for a vagina.

At the peak of the show, Fine Peduncle starts scrogging the frog onstage. Then the thrift store pile mounts the singer from behind, and I see a fractal metaphor for the Great Earthly Hierarchy in this unbroken chain of Muppet sodomy. We are all devious fuckers who continually get fucked. No one is innocent. Suddenly the audience is being covered in seedless Silly String jizm. Everyone cheers.

No one escapes.

Sunday, June 12Another day at the office

Daylight comes and goes. Widespread Panic plays a three hour song. Their audience blows itself up with badly aimed fireworks. Everyone is high. The roadies wheel the band members offstage on dollies, still playing their instruments, and pack them into the truck one by one. They will still be noodling when the crew unloads them at the next gig and plugs their instruments in.

How do we keep working? Up the ladder. Down the ladder. Up the ladder again. The sky is turning blue already.

Monday, June 13I rike a crawfish. Rook, it has a rittre craw!

9am. No rest for the weary. We drain can after can in The Grove, begging the gods for unconsciousness.

Suddenly a man appears across the way and crucifies himself on one of the circus tent air conditioners for nearly an hour. (We will assume) he is completely wonker-zonkied on those little orange crystals—derived from the South American ayahuasca vine—which have become so popular these days.

At the peak of the experience, DMT will often induce a sort of death trip. The user is completely detached from his body, and drawn through a curtain of spiraling colors into otherwordly realms. He is visited by angels, elves, or spirit animals in tuxedos. He is given advice, shown visions. While the sober religious seeker takes a number and spends his whole life waiting for God, this sweaty slobbermouth just cuts the line with a few puffs of sickly spiritual smoke.

A golf cart full of security guards pulls up to him. The driver says:

“You can’t have it all, sir. You have to give some of it to us.”

The psychedelic martyr cracks his eyelid and the security guards just drive away. Was that a reference to the DMT? The gusts coming out of the vents? Or were those purple-shirt angels descending to deliver a universal message of charity and cosmic balance to chemical Christ as he sheds his mortal bonds?

Sleep finds me thinking of those two people who died this year. The sun took their lives. Ten years of Bonnaroo, and ten souls sacrificed. It could happen any day, any time.

Now we eat tables full of crawfish and sing karaoke together. This is a fine reward from promoters who snub their workers like an ex-lover in a room full of fabulous friends. Now that her entourage is gone, she suddenly turns and offers a bottle of champagne. What can you do but accept the gesture graciously?

I read a quote on one of the video screens the other day:

“It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.”

On the surface it looks like clever propaganda to feed someone that you’re about to fuck out of something valuable. On the other hand, maybe Charles Sprugeon had a point. I look at my brothers’ faces smiling over steaming crustacean carcasses, and think, this is a slice of heaven.

I twist the head off of a little red sea bug, suck the spicy juice out, crack his decapitated body, peel his shell off, pinch his meaty gut out, and then eat it with a glob of his head fat. Best crawfish I’ve ever had. It doesn’t matter how much shit the hand-that-feeds throws at me—a killer crew party always leaves a good taste in my mouth.

Comments

Hey there,
Interesting synopsis of Bonnaroo 2011….I believe I might have been the “Hare Krsna dude” you were speaking with, at least part of the time. Just wanted to comment a bit on your opinions and views you stated above. Although to the observer on the street (or at the Roo), devotees of Krsna might look and seem like a bunch of “sectoids” as you call them, or simply cultists due to their similar dress and demeanor, which is understandable. And some of them probably are, as found in any “religious” group. But, as I speak for myself, I can assure you that any spiritual focus I have, any conviction of my beliefs in something other than the materially perceived universe and my lifestyle as a yogi-is not based whatsoever on surrendering to “cartoons of Krsna” as you oddly put it. Krishna Consciousness is surrendering the false concept of the self as a material body for a higher understanding of the self as divine, eternal companion to God, full of sat-chit-ananda (eternal knowledge and divine bliss). This millenium-old path of spiritual yoga is one of deeply personal internal development of spiritual consciousness through different disciplines; some based on the body and intellectual mind, such as hatha yoga and jnana yoga, working up to Bhakti yoga, the yoga of the heart and of devotion. This understanding and attachment to Krishna comes as a result of sincere inquiry into bhakti and a willingness to try something seemingly illogical-chanting sanskrit names of Krishna and reading the Bhagavad Gita, offering selfless service and taking food offered to Krishna. This is the process of cleansing the heart, and only an open heart can perceive higher truths of love. This endless searching of the mind for answers, it’s really a search for love. The truth is love. The path of yoga is the much less traveled road to life. It can be pretty hard. Trust me. The devotees you see out distributing books or whatever, they have really surrendered a lot; selfishness, anger, greed, egoism, materialism, and fear. They have undergone a lot of deeply personal purification of the heart to be able to do what they do and put up with the stuff they do. Our fears and attachments to pleasures, be they sexual indulgence, alcohol, drugs, etc, these things become less and less important as one makes progress on the yogic path. It’s not that devotees think these things are evil-they’re just distractions and pollute or drain the body and consciousness. Once we start reaching higher states of knowledge, bliss, and spiritual fulfillment we would laugh at the idea of drinking booze. It becomes obsolete by choice. And 95% of devotees don’t swear off sex forever-they just start a family and restrict their indulgence somewhat. Also, we should avoid sharing misinformation about Krishna’s interactions and divine past times, these spiritual topics are far far above both your head and mine. If you really want to understand these things you have to purify your heart first and inquire from a higher source, they are not simply mundane topics to be read about in books and misinterpreted and seen as something they most definitely are not.
So as a brother to you I hope that you find those answers you are looking for. Thanks for speaking with us at Bonnaroo. The more you inquire from Krsna Consciousness, the more deep answers will manifest. If you cannot accept the Vedas and Krishna, then I hope you find a spirituality that feels right to you. I hope that peace that surpasses understanding comes to you, you find the answers you seek and you become happy. Hare Krsna.

“Keep it in your pants” is a commonly used expression for both abstinence and marital fidelity.

You guys do physically bow down to Krishna cartoons, just like teenagers bow down to ‘Lil Wayne, just like Christians stare at pictures of Jesus. I will not argue (here) that God is not in all of them.

I have immense respect for the ancient Indian discipline of yoga. Thank you for your concise comment, and good luck on your eternal journey.

So instead of the airport scene, you Krishna’s are lurking around hippy festivals these days
Thanks for sharing your Krishna concepts with the unenlightened masses. In your blog, you wrote, “we should avoid sharing misinformation about Krishna’s interactions and divine past times, these spiritual topics are far far above both your head and mine.” Dang! You’re good!!! Although your explanation of Krishna was almost perfect, I wondered if you could shed some light on this particular comment, “And 95% of devotees don’t swear off sex forever-they just start a family and restrict their indulgence somewhat.” This “indulgence” you speak of, is it restricted to the women or does it also include their children? And while we are on the subject (you did open that door Mr. enlightened Hare Krshna Dude), maybe you could shed some “enlightenment” on all those lawsuits filed against ISKCON. You know, the ones dealing with the sexual exploitation of Krishna children.
Here’s a few words of enlightenment for you – In this country, it’s called PEDOPHILIA!!!

Joe, you have always known how to spin a yarn and create the verbal-visual. Thanks for the free trip to Bonnaroo without the heat, crowds & dust.

In regard to your quote: “It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.” I had someone tell me years ago that the purpose of higher education is not to allow you to earn more so that you could enjoy life more, but to help you understand how to enjoy and appreciate what you have at any level of income, e.g. fine arts & music. There is something to be said for that mode of thought.

Daylight comes and goes. Widespread Panic plays a three hour song. Their audience blows itself up with badly aimed fireworks. Everyone is high. The roadies wheel the band members offstage on dollies, still playing their instruments, and pack them into the truck one by one. They will still be noodling when the crew unloads them at the next gig and plugs their instruments in.

As an Atlanta musician who know many people associated with Widespread, I just loved that quote. I pasted on my facebook wall. Not just good observation by a grunt, this is great writing. I love the imagery of roadies packing them into cases and plugging them back in at the next time all the while they keep jammin. Every see the Aerosmith video where the roadies actually unpack and assemble Joe Perry backstage?

Dee,
You’re comments hardly make rational sense, but what I could decipher through your redneck nazi-like diatribe I will attempt to respond to. In response, there’s no “lurking” going on, we were openly set up at Bonnaroo like everyone else, you know, next to the familiar, totally fine and socially accepted vendors doing everyday American things like selling animal corpses and methamphetamine pipes. What gusto us Hare Krishna freaks have, there chanting and selling burritos! God, don’t we understand people would rather just go and get wasted, have sex with intoxicated girls and not have to think about their inevitable death, and what might lay beyond it? Why don’t we just go get an effing job! America and the rest of the industrial world is killing the entire planet all around us, while we’re too busy eating Mcdonalds and seeing our new Facebook comments to give a damn about anything but our own pleasure, and here are the Hare Krishna’s thinking they’re so high and enlightened. Don’t they know yoga is just a way to get hippie chicks?
You think you’re so intellectual and radical, but you’re just another ignorant hater spitting hatred and fear on something you don’t even understand or know about. You’re identifying the ancient process of Bhakti Yoga with an institution (ISKCON). Yes, ISKCON has had a crap load of problems. But what vast worldwide organization is without controversy and problems? Could we expect an organization that took people off the street and accepted anyone not to run into problems later on? What can I say? I have no excuses for people that do harmful things to others. Are you so perfect, that you can stand on a steeple and judge others? Like you’ve never hurt other people and done sexually perverse things? Yeah right. Do you think all those porno movies you watch were not produced on the abuse of women? Yeah, but that was an adult consenting to blah, blah blah. It’s still sexual exploitation dude, get a clue. Most of those women are abused themselves, maniacally depressed and on drugs. Of course in the case of innocent children it’s a real tragedy. But the reality is that exploitation and abuse of children is happening everyday, everywhere. It happened thirty some years ago in ISKCON. If one person in a group of millions does something wrong, does that implicate and disqualify everyone? That’s the same logic Al-Queda uses, your holiness. Get a clue.
Compared to all the amazingly good and humanitarian works thousands of people have done through ISKCON and other Vaishnava groups, all over the world for 40 years, you’re going to point your greasy finger at the bad that a handful of people did thirty years ago?
What is even the point you’re trying to make? That the Hare Krishna’s should all be burned in nazi ovens? Or that we should just shut up and disappear? Or that we and everything we teach and experience is all bogus because some guys thirty years ago did something wrong? What’s YOUR issue, dude? Are you just an atheist and you hate religion? Are you threatened by what we teach and represent?
I’m sorry you’re such an unhappy person that you wish to hate and curse at other people and religions. We Krishna devotees are constantly persecuted by people of dark consciousness like yourself. May God help you brother. I sincerely hope you find peace, and I’m not being dishonest. And thank you for reminding me not to be proud and puffed up, I’m also very ignorant and fallen. Hare Krishna.

There is nothing funnier than a furious Krishna cultie. Here are some classic quotes from your concise tirade against Dee, in no particular order:

Are you so perfect, that you can stand on a steeple and judge others?

what I could decipher through your redneck nazi-like diatribe I will attempt to respond to.

Redneck? Nazi-like? Both funny jibes, but not as funny as something like: “A cult-like band of dress-wearing closet masturbators.” If you are going to insult people on my comments board, please feel free to be creative.

Do you think all those porno movies you watch were not produced on the abuse of women?

How do you know Dee has ever seen a porno, let alone enjoys them?

You think you’re so intellectual and radical, but you’re just another ignorant hater spitting hatred and fear on something you don’t even understand or know about.

Who’s spitting hatred and fear around here?

America and the rest of the industrial world is killing the entire planet all around us, while we’re too busy eating Mcdonalds and seeing our new Facebook comments to give a damn…

Who the hell is smoking meth at Bonnaroo who isn’t working there? (I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I would never smoke meth without air-conditioning!)

We Krishna devotees are constantly persecuted by people of dark consciousness like yourself.

Why don’t we just go get an effing job[?]!

I’m also very ignorant and fallen. Hare Krishna.

Hope that clears a few things up for you, Vakreshvara Das. As you can clearly see, you’re going to have to do a lot more yoga and prayer bead pulling before you have successfully stifled your defensive animal rage. Thank you for your brief and well thought out comment.